The South African business sector leadership has urged President Cyril Ramaphosa to scale down the size of his Cabinet and appoint capable ministers in his executive.
THE SOUTH African business sector has urged President Cyril Ramaphosa to scale down the size of his Cabinet and appoint capable ministers in the executive.
This comes amid a looming reshuffle of the Cabinet following the swearing-in of four new ANC MPs on Monday, including Paul Mashatile, who is touted to take over as the country’s deputy president.
Though Ramaphosa has managed to streamline his Cabinet from 36 ministers to 28, it still remains bloated with 34 deputy ministers who all earn more than R2 million a year.
In a joint letter written by the CEOs of Business Unity SA (Busa), Cas Coovadia, and Business Leadership SA (BLSA), Busi Mavuso, business said the reality is that a small and focused team can achieve much more than a large, unwieldy group.
Coovadia and Mavuso said that a tighter ”war-room” Cabinet targeted at reforms and united around rapid solutions to implementation blockages could be more effective, given the crises that South Africa is facing.
“To ensure a focused team and minimise cost, some ministries could be combined, such as small business and trade and industry; sports and tourism,” they said.
“Regardless of the size of the Cabinet, we strongly urge you to again put in place detailed performance agreements with ministers which are published and allow the public to hold ministers to account. The previous such exercise proved very worthwhile in our view.”
The business leaders said that, within this context, the role of the Presidency would remain important and could be strengthened further with oversight and accountability mechanisms.
“The Presidency should also be overseeing SOEs through a sovereign holding company rather than individual line departments to avoid conflicts of interest between policy making and shareholder ownership,” they said.
“We believe the Presidency must play a role in cross-cutting issues like the governance and management of SOEs, but we must guard against the Presidency taking on roles that should be the purview of ministries.
“Lack of performance by a minister cannot be sustainably addressed through the Presidency doing what the ministry should have done. This is where accountability and consequence management is critical.”
Ramaphosa is expected to announce changes in his executive before or soon after delivering the annual State of the Nation Address (Sona) on Thursday night.
The swearing-in of the new ANC MPs is seen as a step closer to making those changes on the back of vacancies left by outgoing deputy president David Mabuza.
The position for Minister of Public Service has also been left vacant since Ayanda Dlodlo left for the World Bank in April 2022, while Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula is set to relocate to Luthuli House as full-time secretary-general of the ANC.
Busa and BLSA said though all departments play an important role in government, there were a handful which were fundamental to the functioning of the economy, and required special attention and consideration.
These ministries include mineral resources and energy; transport; trade, industry and competition; public enterprises; finance; and the police.
They said the success or otherwise of these ministries in the next two to three years will determine whether the government can rebuild hope and confidence in the economy.
– BUSINESS REPORT
